MaroonBlog

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Electio ad Absurdum

On Election Day itself, the commentators might as well be slicing open a goat or consulting the oracle at Delphi. Bush will win if it rains in Ohio. Long lines at polling places are good news for Kerry. If your cat coughs up a fur ball while watching Fox News, that means the election will be thrown into the House of Representatives.

And, once the results are known:

For the pundits, this is the moment to bring out their Gibbon, or their Tocqueville. For the cable news network bookers, this is a moment to try and find this guy Gibbon everybody is talking about (de Tocqueville sounds like he might have a foreign accent), a time to discover that he has been dead for 200 years, and a time to settle for Douglas Brinkley instead. Details are out, generalities are in.
...
Columnists in a mood to show off no longer assert that the Nebraska Republican primary holds the key to everything. Instead they assert that the election's meaning cannot be grasped until it is understood that the vote was, in its essence, a referendum on whether life has any meaning and that the conclusion was a ringing "perhaps."
...
After a year or more of this election campaign, you may feel like you're drowning in the triviality of it all. Just hold out for two more days, and you'll be swept up in history.

Lookin' good for Bush

The fact that he's ahead by a decent amount in the Rasmussen polls in Ohio and Florida and challenging Kerry in Pennsylvania and Michigain makes it look like Bush is the favorite going into Tuesday's election. Kerry has to upset Bush in Florida or Ohio, as well as hold onto all the Gore states, to have a chance at winning (barring any surprises).

big dog eat child

Ridiculously funny improv group. I just saw them perform for the second time, and almost every second is funny. If you're in Chicago, go to one of their shows (if you're not easily offended, of course).

The real bad guy

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Karl Rove Strikes Back

The end of ethnicity in politics

The End Of the 'Jewish Vote' (washingtonpost.com): "Religion is eclipsing ethnicity as a force in American politics. To be an Irish Catholic or a German Lutheran used to have real political meaning. Today those patchwork divisions, which stretch back more than a century, are fading. Increasingly, America, or at least white America, has just two political cultures: religious and secular. And next week Jews -- who have held out longer than their Christian brethren -- will finally choose sides."

Borrowing encouraging saving?

Some economic theory for today...

And, that has sueged me into thinking about one of our football cheers (there are many more, which a perusal of this archive will show you), which might possibly be the greatest cheer ever. Let me give it to you, since it's just priceless:

Why is Kerry losing this election?

Nordlinger...

As I have said before, I wish this election weren't so important. But I'm afraid it is. If the Americans elected John Kerry in, oh, 1992 or 1996, that would be one thing. If they elect him in 2004 — that will tell us something disheartening.

A little story: Some time ago, England had what was called "the Metric Martyr." This was a fellow — a grocer or a butcher, I forget which — who sold his goods in imperial measures: pounds, ounces, etc. But because England is now beholden to Brussels, he was prosecuted for not using the metric system (hence, Metric Martyr).

I asked our senior editor David Pryce-Jones (a Brit), "How could the British people permit this? I mean, it's their system — the imperial system, or the English system — to begin with." David answered, "The British people wouldn't permit it. The question is whether they remain the British people."

I have thought about that story in the last few weeks.

UPDATE: The following is also a fine bit of prose and sense:

What George W. Bush is doing now is hard, often unpopular, and right. Will the Americans give him another term, so as to finish the job, or at least further it significantly? It could make a great difference in how history views him. Of course, it could also make a great difference in how history proceeds.

Another UPDATE: More from the big N:

I published a letter containing the old wisdom, "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he'll eat for life." Another reader wrote, "I think the more appropriate line about fishing is, 'Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he'll try to replace you with someone who'll give him fish every day.'"

Friday, October 22, 2004

Wolves in the woods

Michael Barone on the polls

Very Interesting

Making College Accessible (washingtonpost.com): "A close analysis of the effects of price controls on higher education also shows that they are likely to have truly perverse effects. They give states the incentive to raid their own financial aid budgets in order to hold down increases in list-price tuition."

Clever

The Persian Version

Great poem.

: "The Persian Version
Graves, Robert (1895-1985)

Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
As for the Greek theatrical tradition
Which represents that summer's expedition
Not as a mere reconnaissance in force
By three brigades of foot and one of horse
(Their left flank covered by some obsolete
Light craft detached from the main Persian fleet)
But as a grandiose, ill-starred attempt
To conquer Greece--they treat it with contempt;
And only incidentally refute
Major Greek claims, by stressing what repute
The Persian monarch and Persian nation
Won by this salutary demonstration:
Despite a strong defence and adverse weather
All arms combined mangificently together."

UBL: Alive or Dead?

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

International Meddling in Ohio

I for one am not happy that Clark County, quite close to my home of Montgomery County (Clayton Ohio, suburb of Dayton Ohio-Wright Brothers birthplace-Air Force Museum, etc...), is being filled with letters written by medlesome Brits that want Kerry to win the Presidential Election. And this is not just because I support Bush. It's because thise is an internal American issue. Buzz off, foreigners, you have your own countries to run. If you're unhappy with the US, try to use diplomacy to leverage us. Gee, if that requires a military and supporting democratic causes abroad, I'm sorry.

WaPo on Presidential Stump: Kerry-Enthusiastic Response/Bush-Rockstar

Monday, October 11, 2004

Poll Madness!?!

You can tell there's only 22 days until the election because the polls look like they might be going haywire. Zogby has Kerry up by 3 points, but the WaPo poll has Bush up by 6 and ABC has Bush up by 4. The ever stable Rasmussen poll has Bush up by 4, and the traders of the IEM are still favoring Bush by 9 cents.

So, the data is still leaning in Bush's favor, but there might be some hope for Kerry; I think not, however. The Zogby poll is most likely just bad data.

But then, it could be an attempt to spin things in favor of Kerry, just like attempts by one major media outlet to hold one side more 'accountable' than the other.

In other news...

Some sense on Iraq

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq eliminated a criminal regime that tortured and killed on a massive scale, used its oil money to buy foreign officials and illegal technology, and did not recently manufacture or stockpile the chemical weapons it flagrantly used 15 years ago on Iraqi Kurds and Iranian soldiers.

All of those elements need to be taken into account by voters as the presidential campaign thrashes its way to resolution. Each campaign urges the electorate to buy its incomplete version of Iraq, past and present, rather than consider the total, uneven reality of that country.

The Bush administration cannot avoid the responsibility for having conflated Saddam Hussein's weapons programs and ties to terrorism into an urgent threat to U.S. citizens and interests in 2003. The final report of the Iraq Survey Group delivered by Charles A. Duelfer establishes that the Bush case was seriously overstated in that respect. The fact that the invasion enabled us to know this conclusively goes largely unmentioned.

But the emerging emphasis on what the Iraqi dictator did not do -- an emphasis being pushed by the Kerry campaign -- rushes past the lasting importance of what Hussein did do against his own people, his neighbors and the international community. He does not deserve next year's Nobel Peace Prize for not providing al Qaeda with operational support that could be detected by a less-than-perfect CIA.

The moral responsibility that the United States, the United Nations and others continue to bear for turning a blind eye to the gangster behavior of Baghdad for so long must not be obscured in the election-year blizzard of self-interested facts, semi-facts and distortions. No statue of limitations, explicit or implicit, should be extended to war crimes and corruption of the enormity of those committed by the Baathist regime.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Why America Leans Right

This article is a brilliant synopsis of what must be a brilliant book on America's political culture. An absolute must read in every sense. Every 'graph is money, but here is the strong conclusion to the article (read the whole thing anyway, though!):

Conservatism rose in the aftermath of Johnson's Great Society, but skepticism about government is in the nation's genetic code. Micklethwait and Wooldridge note that in September 1935, during the Depression, Gallup polling found that twice as many Americans said FDR's administration was spending too much as said it was spending the right amount, and barely one person in 10 said it was spending too little.

After FDR's 1936 reelection, half of all Democrats polled said they wanted FDR's second term to be more conservative. Only 19 percent wanted it to be more liberal. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won while excoriating "big government," America had lower taxes, a smaller deficit as a percentage of GDP and a less-enveloping welfare state than any other industrialized Western nation.

America, say Micklethwait and Wooldridge, is among the oldest countries in the sense that it has one of the oldest constitutional regimes. Yet it is "the only developed country in the world never to have had a left-wing government." And given the country's broad and deep conservatism, it will not soon.

Afghan elections...

...seem to have went fairly well. Democracy can't be expected to be perfect, especially in a newly-democratic state. It must, however, be allowed to try, so that the people may work to make their state more democratic every day.

UPDATE: The WaPo editorial staff acknowledges the tremendous progress that Afghanistan has had in the last three years:

it also would be foolish to discount the advances Afghanistan has made in the past three years. Not only has most of the country enjoyed relative peace during that time, but per capita incomes have doubled, millions of children -- including most girls -- have returned to school, and infant mortality and other health measures have improved. Kabul and other cities are booming, a national road network is under construction and 3 million refugees have returned home. Mr. Karzai recently ousted two of the most powerful warlords from their governmental positions, and about a quarter of the militia members around the country have been demobilized.

Remember that this progress couldn't have happened if the US hadn't used its military power to remover a repressive regime.

Of course, there's more where that came from, as everyone watching the debate on Friday knows, including Daniel Drezner: "If Kerry gets elected, you just know that his to-the-camera pledge not to raise taxes for households under $200,000 is going to bite him in the ass..." Bite him in the ass indeed.

Finally from me on this today, the IEM is continuing to show a narrowing between the two candidates from the massive 'bubble' of Bush confidence that seemed to have gripped the traders for the past few weeks.

Oxblog may be unhappy...

Saturday, October 09, 2004

Just riciculous

Glenn Reynolds has a post on bias in the media, especially the New York Times, nearly every day. It's just ridiculous. The public has to be noticing. The era of big media, at least in a form recognizable to now, is on the downward slope into oblivion.

Friday, October 08, 2004

Terrorists' Candidates?

Duh: "It is perfectly true, as Bush critics constantly point out, that many millions around the world -- from Jacques Chirac to the Arab street -- dislike Bush and want to see him defeated. It is ridiculous to pretend that bin Laden, Zarqawi and the other barbarians are not among them."

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Khaaaaaan!!!

Yeah, I know, it's geeky, but no geek can hear the name Genghis Khan without thinking of Kirk'simmortalutterance (a website with it's own URL in dedication is great--make sure you have the sound on;). That's why I'm posting in celebration to the finding of Genghis Khan's tomb.

This isn't good news

Well, unless the research leads to some sort of treament for killer flu, it isn't.

As time marches on, the ability to create such weapons become more and more accessable to those that would be willing to use them. That's why we have to beat terrorists now, and now wait until it's too late.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Plurality is good

I'm glad to hear that the law against hostile learning environments is being enforced, even when the discrimination is against "white" "christian" "males". I'd like my rights to be protected just like everyone elses'.

US Space Superiority Planning

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

No Taste?

I personally find Anne-Sophie Mutter to be a not very exceptional violin soloist, although Oxblog seems to disagree. Gill Shaham is the contemporary violinist to listen too, and if you need a recording, go bust out your Heifetz!

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Jason Broander was a fourth year at the University of Chicago and is currently majoring in History; he has a strong interest in historic events of both the past and present and welcomes any comments and suggestions for this site;)

*easter egg*you win ;)-*

Andrew Dzwonchyk is a second year in the college. He plans to major in Economics, Poli Sci, and/ or History, and is a native of the DC area. His areas of particular interest include foreign policy and social issues.